Karl-Filip Coenegrachts

Karl-Filip is Head of Unit of Data, Governance and Communities at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (imec-SMIT-VUB), and Smart City coordinator at the FARI AI for the Common Good Institute in Brussels. He is also Chair of the Board of Directors of the global cities network Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC).

He is a recovering bureaucrat, having worked at and with all levels of government. In 2018 Karl-Filip founded the Cities of People partnership to develop and implement a people-centered model for future cities. In 2019 he successfully organised the first edition of the Brussels Creative Bureaucracy Festival.

Previously he served as the Chief Strategy Officer of the City of Ghent in Belgium for 15 years, responsible among other things for the city’s innovation strategy. He is the co-founder of Digipolis, the public ICT-company of the cities of Antwerp and Ghent and was also member and chair (2017-2018) of the ExCom of Eurocities and member of the board of the Knowledge Center for Flemish Cities (2014-2018).